I run for life

This weekend was the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I walked 26.2 miles (a marathon) on Saturday, and 13.1 miles (a half-marathon) on Sunday, and my generous donors helped me raise $2,132 for breast cancer research -- a small portion of the six million dollars raised by 2,600 Boston participants this weekend!

Let's start at the end of the walk, because that's when the most personally dramatic (and by "dramatic" here I mean "embarrassing") thing happened for me. I had walked the whole way with a very nice girl named Sarah, and Sarah and I both agreed that we probably wouldn't even take our shoes off to examine our blisters until we got home from the walk. But, because I never listen to myself, I decided to check things out in the parking lot, where I discovered a very bulbous blister in a weird spot on my toe. (TMI?) On the phone, my mom is all, "Let the medics wrap your feet!" and so I think, yeah, what the hell, they did it for me last night at the Wellness Village and I was fine.

So I hobble over to the medical tent, and while I'm waiting, it starts to get kind of windy and cold. I'm contemplating just giving up and leaving, but again, I fail to listen to myself. So I'm on the cot, and I'm really sunburned, and I'm cold, and all around me there are people with ailments, and needles are produced to aspirate blisters, and I go, "Um, I get kind of squeamish, so I'm just not going to look and put my head down," and the next thing I know, I have people shaking me awake and saying, "Whoa, what's going on?" to which I wittily reply: "Uh, passing out, pretty much."

Anyone who knows me knows that this happens to me All. The. Time. But because I'm in a medical tent, they're all, "You're not going anywhere!" and they take my blood pressure (too low) and my pulse (too fast) and they're like, "So, we're going to call for some paramedics to take you to the ER to run some lab tests," like, oh God please no don't make me do this just give me some apple juice or something, and finally someone overrules them and says they can give me fluids on site and I've just had a vagal reaction, which, by the way, should be the title of my biography. (A Vagal Reaction: The Fainting Spells of Rachel.) Which I'm not terribly thrilled about, because I'm pretty sure that the insertion of the IV is going to make me pass out again. Meanwhile I have caused a pretty big commotion around the medical tent. At least I think I have, because my eyes are closed the whole time while I try to think normal-blood-pressure thoughts, but I hear lots and lots of voices.

And that's the story of how I walked 39.3 miles over two days, only to pass out and need an IV because of a blister on my toe. (Well, and also it turns out I was really badly sunburned, because I thought it was going to rain and didn't bring sunscreen -- and because I am an idiot -- so maybe I had some sunstroke too.)

OK, enough whining about my IV; the whole point of the weekend was that It's Not About You, It's About Breast Cancer. And it was a pretty amazing experience. I was very nervous about doing it all by myself, but I met this great girl on Saturday morning and we walked all but the last 3 miles of the marathon together, and the whole half-marathon together. Someone along the way told us that she knows a group of women who choose a different city every year and use the walk as their reunion weekend, which I think is a great idea, because it's an awesome cause, you get to see an entire city, you don't have to pay for accomodations because you sleep in the Wellness Village, and what better way is there to catch up with your friends than to take a walk for two days straight? (We left the Opening Ceremonies at 7:00 AM and arrived in the Wellness Village at 4:00 PM; on Sunday we left at 7:30 AM and arrived at 12:30 PM. You stroll, you talk to people along the way, you take pictures, you stop for lunch, etc.)

The best thing about the walk were the people who cheered us on along the way. Especially in Winchester, where I work. There were tons of little kids out with lemonade stands or giving away chocolate to the walkers -- so cute! I was really touched by signs people made that said things like, "Thank You for Walking." I knew when I signed up that I was walking for a cause, but I didn't really make that connection before the walk itself.

How am I going to stand for five hours at work tomorrow? I have no idea.